For the past several weeks the walls at Skew Gallery have been home to Diana Thorneycroft's most recent series of works, Group of Seven Awkward Moments. These colour photographs are bright and infectious reconsiderations of the wilderness imagery of the Group of Seven and the ideas of Canadian identity that come with them. A testament to contemporary détournement, the finished pieces take old works in a new direction as they put a new spin on established ideas about Canadiana.

Diana Thorneycroft, Group of Seven Awkward Moments (In Algonquin Park), 2007. Colour photograph, 40x50".

Thorneycroft employs a Camp aesthetic to stage modern day tableaux vivants in the foreground of her photographs. For the background, she has reproduced images from Tom Thomson along with other Group of Seven painters and Emily Carr. These backgrounds are subtly manipulated by the artist with pastels and are blurred to set them off into the distance, leaving the primary focus on the narrative unfolding in front of them. Each narrative has an element of the body in harm's way, a consistent theme in Thorneycroft's work.[1]

Here, Thorneycroft takes seemingly innocent parts of our Canadian identity and exposes their dark underbelly. In the "Algonquin Park" image, an RCMP officer flees the scene as two children are just about to stick their tongues on the flagpole. This pole, already spotted with dismembered tongues, displays a waving Canadian flag. One child lies as if dead, in the snow, another seems to be being taunted by a group of children while bleeding from his mouth, no longer able to speak. A grown man stands by with his dog, watching, but doing nothing. The dog happily has a new toy, a claimed tongue dangling from his mouth.

It is this element of darkness that keeps this particular series firmly out of the realm of true Camp. According to Susan Sontag, "Camp and tragedy are antitheses. There is seriousness in Camp...and, often, pathos...But there is never, never tragedy."[2] Regardless, the artist's use of purchased toys, props and figurines creates a dialogue about this aesthetic that translates in its blatancy to a consideration of the landscapes themselves. The Group of Seven's iconic paintings of windswept lakes and icebergs have become about marketing a Canadian identity. Of all of the people who are familiar with the Group of Seven's art or with Emily Carr, the majority will have never seen an original painting but will have seen numerous posters, greeting cards and copycats. In addition, they may also be familiar with the mythologies of the work: a lost and assumed dead Tom Thomson, a rough and rugged group of men who painted out in the Canadian wilderness, and an eccentric old woman who pushed her pet monkey around in a baby carriage.

Thorneycroft offers no firm answers as to whether these historical paintings should fall in the category of Camp but she certainly toys with this as their ultimate effect. What is more important is how effectively she brings these considerations out of the past. In the world of performance art, the tableau vivant has been popular fodder: the idea of live display providing an opportunity to draw the viewer into the work with a reciprocated gaze.[3] While there are no living beings in Thorneycroft's images, the narratives enacted in her images are brought to life by detailed dioramas that imitate live theatre, taking a different route to achieve this same effect.

With this series, Thorneycroft sparks a subjective, present day re-evaluation of national identity. It is through her use of universal Canadian experiences that she most effectively draws the onlooker into the art, creating a similar accountability as the traditional tableaux vivants. Whether it is memories of a tongue stuck on metal, of camping, of hockey, or of Bob and Doug McKenzie, the viewer is drawn into the scene by its undeniable subjective associations. Once a part of these, they are faced with Thorneycroft's own brand of the humorous grotesque.

1 Sandals, Leah. The National Post,"If It Doesn't Kill You..." Oct 20, 2008.
2 Sontag, Susan. A Susan Sontag Reader. New York: Farrar/Straus/Giroux,1982, p.115.
3 Fisher, Jennifer et al. CounterPoses. Montreal: Display Cult/Oboro, 2002, p.6.